A little over a month ago, on August 6th we found out about a baby boy in West Virginia that needed a home. A friend of mine contacted me to tell me that he was born on August 4th and was due to be discharged from the hospital. She talked with his birth family about us and they were excited to meet us! Peter was in Texas on business and I was home in Virginia and our future son was in West Virginia! That night, after he was discharged, he spent the night at our friend’s house until we could get to him the next day. On August 7th Peter traveled back home from Texas and then we drove to meet our son in West Virginia! We met with his birth family and Jenson at a Bethany Christian Services office. That first meeting with his birth family was perfect! We really hit it off and they were so thankful and relieved that we were going to be raising their son. The whole moment was surreal! Holding Jenson for the first time took my breath away and I couldn’t help but let the tears fall. After many hugs and pictures we left with our new baby boy! That first night was a sleepless night for this momma… not because Jenson kept me up, but because I couldn’t believe all that had taken place in those 24 hrs! We went from a family of 2 to a family of 3 in the blink of an eye! We spent 9 days in West Virginia waiting for the interstate paperwork to be completed. During that time we enjoyed getting to know our son, falling in love with this sweet baby the Lord provided, and adjusting quickly to being parents! Finally, on our 5th wedding anniversary (8/16), we were able to bring our new baby home!

Common questions:

-What type of adoption will we have?

Open. We are going to keep in touch with Jenson’s birth family. Over time we plan to develop a relationship with them and will send them letters and pictures and have visits together throughout the year.

-What are the birth parents like?

They are WONDERFUL people and we now consider them a part of our family. For their privacy and for the protection of Jenson’s story, that is all we will share for now.

-Can he be taken away?

Nope! He is ours forever!

-When will the adoption be finalized?

We will start the process for finalization in December and hope to have everything finalize by the time Jenson is 6 months old.

We have decided to relaunch our ADOPT t-shirt fundraiser due to the interest we are still getting! We are thankful for the financial assistance this provides for us in our effort to adopt a little one, but we are also very excited that the blessing of adoption is being widely proclaimed through this t-shirt!

We have made a few changes this time around:

– a ladies shirt is now available

– a toddler shirt is now available

-the toddler and youth styles will be navy

Like last time, the campaign will be open for 3 weeks only. It will end on August 13th!! Shirt reservations will only be filled if our goal of 100 sales is met, so if we do not sell 100 shirts, any payments will be reimbursed.

Adult shirts are $25 each and kid shirts are $16 each. About half of the procedes will go toward our adoption fund.

Please feel free to email this information to any of your friends, family members, coworkers, or church members if you think they would be interested in supporting adoption and assisting us in Bringing Home “Baby B!”

Thanks to the kindness and generosity of many of our friends and family, we were successful in reaching our goal of selling 100 t-shirts to raise money toward our adoption!! In fact, we surpassed our goal and sold 104 shirts!! That is AWESOME! We raised $1448 toward Bringing Home “Baby B”! We truly have the best friends and family! Thank you to those of you who purchased a shirt, sent money to help us, encouraged us with your sweet comments or lifted us and our little one up in prayer. It means so much to us to have your loving support. We are looking forward to seeing everyone in their shirts!! Stay tuned for a future post that will be dedicated to those who helped us reach our goal!

It is with great excitement that we announce to all our family and friends that we are adopting!!

We started the process with Bethany Christian Services back in October 2012 and we were officially approved to adopt in March 2013. The approval process required extensive background checks, interviews, training classes, homestudies, references and creating a profile for birthparents to learn about us. We are thankful to the Lord that He brought us through that process and we are now “patiently” waiting for the baby that He has for us!

As we eagerly anticipate the arrival of our little one we ask that you pray with us!

Our prayers:

That the Lord will help us to be patient. (Our baby could arrive any day or our wait could be as long as 2 years.)

That the Lord will give comfort to the birthparents of our baby. (Our gain is going to be someone else’s great loss. That is the hardest part of this adoption process and we don’t take it for granted.)

Bringing Home “Baby B”

Adoption is a large finical undertaking and we are thankful to the Lord that he has provided a large portion of the funds already. However, if you are interested in helping to lighten the financial burden for us, please consider purchasing one (or more!) of our ADOPT T-shirts! Our friend Christy (who is also an adoptive momma!) kindly designed a t-shirt for us that we could sell as a way to help raise money toward our adoption. Click here to reserve your t-shirt!

Please email us a picture of yourself in our ADOPT t-shirt so that we can include you in a blog post that we will dedicate to all of our wonderful supporters!

We thank you for your love and support and we appreciate your prayers as we continue this journey! We look forward to the day that we share the wonderful news of the arrival of our baby! Come back to this blog often for updates!

Several months ago I introduced you to our friends, Jonathan and Christy, in this post. At that time they were just getting started on their journey to parenthood through adoption. I would like to share with you the AWESOME news that they are now parents as of 5 pm today!!!

Here is an email that Jonathan sent to share the good news:

We’re overjoyed to announce that Jadon Ryder was born January 8, 2012, at 2:09 pm. At birth, he was 7 lbs. 3 oz. & 20 1/2 inches long.

Jadon’s Story
Jadon’s birth mom, is a college student who met with us two times in December and chose us as part of her adoption plan. She selected his middle name Ryder, which means “knight,” and we chose his first name Jadon which means “grateful” (Nehemiah 3:7). The day after he was born, we met him at the hospital, and it was love at first sight! The following day, we met with his birth mom and her family for a deeply emotional time of prayer for her and for Jadon. Then, an hour later, we brought him home.

According to Virginia law, his birth mom had until today at 5 pm to change her mind, so we’ve been foster parents the last 10 days. And today when 5 pm came and she didn’t change her mind, Jadon legally became our son! Adopting Jadon reminds us of the gospel, that God adopted us into his family, through the saving grace of Christ “who came to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” (Galatians 4:5).

The day after Jadon arrived home, I was able to meet him and rejoice with Jonathan and Christy. Here are a few pictures I took:

Our dear friends have started the adoption process!! We are so very excited for them as they embark on this overwhelming yet rewarding experience.

Jonathan and Christy have started a blog called Operation Firefly to share their story and to keep friends and family up to date on the process. There you will also find out about fundraising opportunities and ways to help them financially along the way.

We are praying that the Lord will bless this wonderful couple with a little one soon!